The Download
by Sockling
Summary: Chell finds a certain spherical robot lying batter, broken and pretty much dead in the forest outside where she lives. She manages to get him stable but in a peculiar way.
1. Chapter 1

The forest was alive in the evening. It was summer and every tree was busy as animals went about their business. Suddenly there was a loud boom and everything went silent. Small creatures dived for cover as a flaming streak shot through the canopy, a high garbled shriek coming from it, before it crashed hard into a tree and landed in a burning pile on the ground. When after a minute the smouldering heap didn't move the forest noises began again. The little lump of twisted metal lay beneath the tree, blackened and forgotten.

* * *

Chell shot up from her relaxed sprawl on the sofa, shocked out of sleep by a noise she knew all too well.

Blinking away sleep, she glanced around. Her living room was exactly as she'd left it when she'd got in from work. The TV on quietly, creating just enough background noise for it to be relaxing, all doors shut and her laptop sitting charging on her desk. So the loud boom hadn't happened in her house. It hadn't been that noise that woke her properly anyway. It was the terrified scream and the loud sound of crunching metal that followed.

In the eight years she'd lived in her house, she had never heard anything like that. Those noises were the ones that haunted her dreams, the sound of metal folding in on its self, quiet clatters that turned into empty echoes, that background hum that never stopped and showed her that the place was alive and always watching her.

When Chell had eventually stumbled across civilisation she had immediately been swarmed by people, wanting to know what had happened to her. Having, as far as she could remember, never even looked at another human, Chell had panicked and ran, going as far as tackling and punching someone who tried to catch her. It wasn't long before she was carted off by the police. Shocked by the state she was in they took her to a hospital. Then, patched up, clean, all wounds and burns tended to, Chell was taken back to the police station.

Then the questioning started. What had happened to her? Why had her arms been all burnt? What had she been doing wearing an aperture jumpsuit? Aperture had been inactive for decades, hadn't they? And what on earth were those white things she'd had strapped to her feet?

She stared through them all, not answering a single question. She knew that if she did then the authorities that had her under lock and key would want to investigate. That would be just what She would want. More test subjects.

So she never said a word and eventually they realised that this woman wasn't going to talk. She heard words like 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' and 'withholding her voice to give her something to control' and then eventually, to her great relief, 'house', 'her own space', 'give her a chance to recover'.

They set her up in a small semi detached bungalow, on the very edge of the local forest, noticing that the closer she was to nature the more relaxed her behaviour was. They promised that the government would support her until she felt well enough to work and not to worry about anything. This house was hers, no one else's, and she was completely safe here.

It had taken her a while but she eventually got a job at a local law firm as the assistant for her boss, began to make money and get actual possessions, things that were hers, that she owned and looked after. The bungalow had started off empty, with the exception of a sofa and a bed. When she'd saved enough she replaced them and then bought what she needed. She even began to trust electronics again, getting a television and a laptop so she could work at home.

She made friends with the people in her street, letting them into her home on a regular basis. She wanted the whole human experience, damn the consequences and she needn't have worried anyway. Her neighbours never pried or asked her personal questions. They were just content with having her as their friend. Chell swore to herself that if anything ever tried to hurt them she would be there to stop it.

She never forgot Aperture or what had happened to her but as each year pasted it began to feel more and more like a dream. Until tonight.

That metallic screech was so familiar it had to be one of Her creations, running about in Caraway forest. In her mind there was no doubt. Chell swung her legs onto the floor and walked to her storage cupboard. Yanking open the door, she spotted the two dusty long fall boots lying at the back- the only thing that she'd gotten returned to her from the police- along with the other things she'd prepared incase She changed her mind and one of Aperture's robotic abominations came after her. She pulled out the boots and strapped them on, testing her weight on the long braces before dipping back into the cupboard and pulling out her shotgun.

She was going to send whatever made that horrid, garbled shriek back into the hell hole it had crawled from.

* * *

For the inexperienced hiker the deeper part of Callaway forest was a jungle of tall, twisted trees, roots that grabbed your feet and sent you sprawling into the mud and the occasional call of a roosting bird. And this was during the day. By the time Chell got outside and began to follow her usually walking trail the sun had sunk below the horizon the night creatures had begun to move. However, Chell wasn't worried. She'd been in this part of the forest countless time before and knew the patchy trail almost a well as the back of her hand.

The only difference between now and the last time she was striding along the trail was the long far boots -they somehow made her feel a little bit safer when anything she wasn't sure about cropped up, plus she could run like hell in them if she wanted to- the shotgun and her needlepoint focus, watching every tree, listen for any type of movement. All it would take was for one thing to be out of place and-

Chell could smell it before she saw it. The smell of burning leaves and bark, musty and strong. She followed it, eventually finding herself staring at a large burnt hole in the canopy of leaves.

And then she saw it.

A smouldering pile of metal that was so familiar she almost turned and ran.

* * *

**AN: Hi, so this is the first chapter of my fic. Please review if you like. Thanks for reading. It does get better I promise.**

**EDIT: So I added the page dividers to both chapters so it's not as confusing. The second chapter more so. And I'm doing my A Level exams at the minute so I can't write as often as I want to, but I am working on chapter 3, slowly. **


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Chell stared at Wheatley's mangled, blacked shell. His optic was smashed and it looked like his faceplate had been the first part of him that rammed into the tree, as it was flattened and crushed into his body. His lower handle was hanging on by a few fraying wires and the upper handle was missing entirely.

Chell reached out her shotgun and gently nudged him, not sure whether she really wanted a response or not. He'd betrayed her, trapped her, insulted her- though they were pretty pathetic insults- and then tried to kill her when she wasn't any use to him anymore. Why was she still standing there?

She turned to leave when the speaker sticking out of his shell sparked, spluttered and began to make a quiet buzzing sound, like a dying bee. Then, through a cloud of static, sounding faint and glitchy, she hear him.

"Sssscchhhtttt... llo? Any-any-anyon... ssscchhh... little hel-help? You're quite hones-nestly my lastttbbzzzzztttttt."

His voice faded out, the speaker gave a last fitful burst of static and then everything went silent.

Chell blinked, startled. He'd sounded scared out of his wits. She reached out and patted his dented shell then, shouldering her shotgun, scooped him up. She didn't know what she was going to do with a dead core, but it felt wrong to just leave him there.

Halfway back through the forest she noticed a quiet humming coming from inside his core. Feeling a small glimmer of hope form and trying her hardest to squash it at the same time, she flipped him over in her arms. Chell peered through a crack in his shell and spotted a small box with a series of blacked out lights on it. Right at the bottom a small yellow light flashed rapidly. His processor was still working.

Chell was running before she ever registered what it meant.

* * *

Chell's front door slammed open and she flew in, cradling Wheatley in her arms with the shotgun tossed over her shoulder. She threw it on the sofa then placed the broken core on her desk and began to pace, thinking.

The yellow light on his processor clearly meant that some part of him, no matter how small that part was, was alive. He wasn't gone yet. Chell turned him over again, looking for anything that might be of any help. The front of his core was pretty much useless so she turned her attention to the back. His back port, the one he used to activate controls back There, was the only thing that seemed to be in one piece.

Suddenly, Chell had an idea. She ran to her supply cupboard, wrenched open the door again and took out a small box. She opened it, pulling out a lead with a USB stick at one end and a simple three pin connector on the other. She tried the connector against Wheatley's back port, flashing a small smile of satisfaction when it slid in with a click. Plugging the other end into her laptop, she sat down and lifted the lid.

She was greeted by a quiet bleep and a pop up window.

'New Handware Detected.'

'Transfer files of program Aperture Science ID Sphere to main hard drive?

Chell clicked Ok and watched as the loading bar on the screen began to fill.

* * *

Wheatley had had a pretty rough day.

He'd actually lost count of how long he'd been stuck in space, watching the stars, half listening to Space Cores demented gibberish, which got less like gibberish and more like long periods of static in his head as the months rolled by and regretting his last moments on earth. Quite a lot actually.

The last thing he saw before he was sucked into the soundless, airless void was the lady. Sometimes he was sure that the whole 'letting him go' thing was an accident, that he'd been knocked out of her hands by Her claw. But other times he thought he might have seen a glimmer of satisfaction in her eyes, that she was happy to see him fly off like that, like she had let him go willingly.

This had literally drove him half insane, to the point where sometimes he didn't know how he'd gotten into space. Had he been built here? Was the Space Core a friend someone had made him for company? Wasn't he supposed to be somewhere else?

But those times were few and far between and eventually he would snap out of peaceful ignorance and start thinking about the lady again. It was an endless circle.

Or it was until he got a massive meteor to the side of the faceplate.

His optic got a fabulous new crack in it and it was bye moon, bye Space Core, bye endless boredom and regret and hello earth at a couple thousand miles per hour.

By the time he became a large fireball, had broken the sound barrier and done a high-speed face plant into a tree had he finally been able to think through the haze of panic and perform an internal analysis. He then realise he was pretty much done for.

Battery power at 10% and dropping. Backup power disabled. Optic shattered, giving and receiving no information. Auditory sensors on their way out. The only plus was his artificial nervous system was almost completely shot so couldn't feel much pain. He could barely feel the dirt he was lying in.

The only company he had was the red flashing words in his head. Battery power at 9%.

The words were at 4% when he felt a faint nudge, heard a small tap of metal on metal.

He took a deep, shuddery metal breath and decided to test his vocal processor.

"Sssscchhhtttt... llo? Any-any-anyon... ssscchhh... little hel-help? You're quite hones-nestly my lastttbbzzzzztttttt."

He tried again but all that came out was a burst of static. After that he gave up. His last conscious thought was he hoped that whatever found him did something useful with him.

* * *

**AN: Hi again. Thanks for reading. I'm quite surprised at how many people actually favourited and followed! And Thanks for the reviews. I've posted this at 3am so if there's any mistakes just let me know and I'll sort it. See you again soon!**

**EDIT: And here the edit to this chapter 2! **


	3. Chapter 3

'Program Aperture Science ID Sphere file transfer complete.'

'Checking system compatibility. Please wait...'

'System compatibility at 87%.' 'Purging corrupt files'

'Beginning program auto start...'

Wheatley was vaguely aware he shouldn't be where he was. He was sure something had happened to him, something catastrophic that had rendered him a goner. He waited for his optic to come online, hoping that he'd at least recognise his surroundings.

'AN ERROR HAS OCCURRED'

'All visual input is offline.'

"AH! I'm blind!"

Wheatley heard a dull thud, which rattled whatever he was sitting on, a quiet feminine sounding grunt and a scabbling right next to his audio processor. There was a loud double click.

'Starting Web cam.'

Suddenly, his vision lit up with white light that stabbed at his newly discovered optic.

"AAGHH! Owow_ow_! What is that?! Turn it off!"

He tried to shut his eye and was startled to find that his optic shields were missing. A small front room slowly began to take shape, dimly lit by early morning light that filtered through the curtains. As far as he could tell he was sitting on a table, but something felt... off. Wheatley tried to look around but his optic didn't respond.

"Oh god I can even move it! What's going on? I was in space..." He thought as far back as he could and the first image that presented its self was a large chunk of speckled rock flying towards him. "Oh! Oh I remember. That meteor! That bloody meteor! It cracked my optic. I'd just gotten used to the first crack for gods sake! Though it could have been a lot worse. It could have hit me in the side and smashed my processor or something or knock me into the moon and shattered me completely. Or, or... I can't really think of anything worse. Heh, smashed shell. Thank god that didn't happen. I wouldn't be here... Wait. How did I even get here?" He asked the room.

Then he spotted her pulling herself back into her seat. The lady!

"It's, it's you! You're actually alive! Oh god I'm so happy to see you!' Wheatley went into ramble mode. 'You have no idea how lonely it was up there. There was literally nothing to do and I was going mad. I got hit by a meteor and it almost completely, and I'm not exaggerating here, almost flattened me and I thought I was going to die and-" He froze. "wait, hold on, backtrack a second. I did die. I did pretty much die, back there, wherever I landed. I mean, wow lady, I never knew you were that smart! Wait, rephrase that, I knew were smart, obviously, but I had no idea you knew how to fix machinery."

The lady looked at something outside his line of sight- he still couldn't move his optic- and silently bit her lip. She reached for it and pulled a smashed lump of metal into view.

At first he didn't recognise it.

"What's that then? I think its a bit dangerous to have broken bits of metal lying about don't you? That another thing you're fixing?"

She shook her head, reached up and tapped on him then placed her hand of the lump again. She flipped it over.

"What the _hell_ is that..."

Realisation smashed into his mind like a ton of bricks as he was staring into his own dark, lifeless optic. He responded the only way he knew how. He panicked.

"Oh god, oh god! That's my body!" He cried "You're holding my body! Why are you holding my body?! _WHY AM I NOT IN MY BODY?! What bloody hell did you do you crazy lunatic?!"_

As soon as the words left his processor he regretted them. The lady's face switched from genuine pity and concern- facial expressions he'd very rarely seen coming from her- to anger. She picked him up roughly from the table and strode toward a mirror hanging in the corridor to the front door. She held him up and he saw in the reflection a small woman, at least 30, holding a laptop repeating the scene in front of him in its little screen. She stood stock still, glaring at his reflection. Wheatley was very glad that looks couldn't kill or he'd have become another smoking wreckage by now.

And, of course, this was the exact moment that he central nervous system decided it wanted in on the fun and switched on with a jolt, making him suddenly painfully aware of every USB port, every chip, every single wire that was encased in his new (well to him anyway) bright red plastic shell.

Wheatley squawked, then winced internally as he heard how tinny his voice was.

"So you saved me." He stopped, realising what he just said. "Heh, you _literally_ saved me."

The lady nodded then turned and walked back to the living room, dumping him unceremoniously back on her desk. She stood in front of him, arms crossed, stance tense, as if she was expecting something.

Wheatley missed the cue completely.

"What?"

The lady's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She turned her back on him and stormed toward the door at the opposite end of the room.

"Wait, wait! I can't follow you!" Wheatley hollered "Hold on! Stop, what did I do?!"

The only thing that he got in response was a loud slam as she shut the door.

* * *

Chell sat on her bed, seething. The ungrateful little bastard. She'd saved his life and what was the first thing he does once he realises? He starts screaming abuse at her. Chell had been prepared for a bit of confusion, had been fully prepared to explain what had happened, what she had done to him and how she was going to help. But she wasn't going to left him treat her like that, not again. It was like that raving egomaniac had never left.

She sighed, shoulders slumping. She had been so sure. Lying on the forest floor, he had sounded so much like his normal self. The one friendly voice in Aperture, the one friend she'd had back there. That why she hadn't left him there. She didn't want to leave him thinking she didn't care.

Chell jumped as she heard his voice through the door.

"Lady? Lady come back! Please. Look, I'm sorry I called you a lunatic. It just slipped out! L-lady? Are you listening? Please come back."

She had heard those words before, just as she escaped his 'brilliant death trap'. He had begged her to return, even to cast herself into a seemingly bottomless pit. She listen to his voice, comparing then to now.

"Come on! I'm sorry! Lady, I can't move. I can't come and get you. Please come out!"

Same voice, same inflection, same robot, but this time there was something there that wasn't there before. He actually sounded _sincere._

As the anger fuelled haze left her mind Chell realised that she should at least give him a chance. A far as she knew he might not have spoken to anyone for the full eight years he'd been up there. She stood up and opened to door, stopping Wheatley mid - ramble.

"It's not 'lady'. It's Chell."

* * *

AN: Sorry for the months wait. I've got my last A Level exam tomorrow and I've been writing here and there, whenever I can. It's a great de-stressor I'll tell you that. Anyway, once again, thanks for reading. Leave a review if you want and I'll try to be a bit quicker with the next chapter but I'm not promising anything. Oh, and thanks to everyone one faved or followed.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Chell? Chell? Wake up. Cheeeell?" His voice penetrated her dream, dragging out the 'e' in her name for all it was worth.

Chell grunted, still half asleep, and grabbed the duvet cover, yanking it over her head.

She heard a muffled chuckle.

"I'm sorry I really can't help it. It's fun to say."

Why had she brought him into her room again?

"Oh, and thanks for letting me come in here. It's really quiet in there. And you said to wake you up at 7."

Ah.

Chell rolled onto her back, rubbed her eyes and then cast a bleary glance at the laptop perched on her night stand. Now that she thought about it, it was quite disconcerting to have Wheatley's voice coming from her laptop. He had no visible way of expressing himself and had a small dark camera to address. This was the only similarity between it and the core sitting on her desk in the other room, the fact that they both only had one 'eye' but at least the core blinked and didn't stay unnervingly still. It felt like she was being stared at.

Chell sat up, placing one hand over her mouth as she yawned widely. She really hadn't thought this through. She had heard Wheatley crash at about 10pm and by the time she had found him, ran back home and began to download his program (which she still had no clue what the long-term implications of that were) it had been 12am at least. And the transfer had taken ages. It had been about 5am when he had first screamed directly into her ear, jerking her out of sleep and sending her thumping to the floor. By the time she had eventually stumbled into her room after Wheatley's little fit, carrying the excitable ex-core in her arms, it had been 6am or more.

To put it plainly, she was tired.

But she had a job to do and the bills had to be paid.

She could remember being able to push through the exhaustion and carry on as if nothing had happened. Nightmares had plagued her for a good few months after she began to settle onto her neighbourhood. It was only when she crashed out at work and woke up screaming and disoriented had she sought out a psychiatrist under the direct instruction of her boss.

She hated it at first, feeling patronised and not wanting to tell Andrew anything, but she became used to their Thursday afternoon meetings and eventually opened up. Not about Aperture or Her or a certain physics warping weapon that was the reason she had such an itchy trigger finger- that would have been dangerous for all parties involved- but about the way she felt before, during and after her nightmares, how she had been trapped and almost completely helpless at one point and how the feeling returned whenever she had a nightmare and lingered for at least three or four days afterward.

Andrew had listened carefully to everything Chell said and suggested that whenever she felt uneasy or nervous she should go for a walk somewhere she felt calm and think though those feelings, try to pinpoint where they originated from.

Chell had follow his instructions to the letter and that's how her forest walks started. And surprisingly they worked. Soon she returning to the forest because she wanted to not because she needed to, the nightmares few and far between. She didn't need to push through exhaustion anymore. Her nights were restful and undisturbed.

Chell's thoughts snapped back to the present when she realised that her room was silent.

She turned to look at Wheatley, puzzled. Why had he stopped talking?

The laptop made a small relieved sigh.

"Oh thank god you're moving again. You zoned out there. Wouldn't stop staring at that wall. Are you... are you okay?"

Chell nodded quickly, then remembered that he knew she could talk. In fact, her voice seemed to have a tremendous choke hold on his vocal processor. All she needed to do was clear her throat and Wheatley was silent, hanging on her every word.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

"Great, that's great. Brilliant even. So... what're we doing today?"

She could practically hear the smile in his voice.

"I," Chell said, scooping him up and walking into the living room. "am going to work."

"Ah... and I take it I'm staying here."

She nodded again. He seemed to understand that long-winded explanations weren't really easy for her. Setting him on her desk, she went to get ready.

* * *

The lady could speak! She was actually talking to him! Wheatley was sure he had almost shut down with shock when she said her first words to him. The lady, no, Chell, she had specifically said to call her Chell not lady. He would have to remember that. It sounded so weird to him. He'd been calling her 'lady' ever since he had met her and she had never said a word to correct him. Even Mrs Bossy Boots Herself only ever referred to Chell as 'she'. And that had been during a time he'd rather not dwell on. The fact that she was talking to him in full sentences was what really surprised him. When the backup power in the relaxation centre had run out and left him with thousands of vegetables, Chell had literally been Wheatley's last hope and, due to his multiple failures with subduing the other surviving test subjects, one of which had gotten very angry with him and tried to bash him with a lamp, he was feeling slightly pessimistic about the last one.

The fact that she'd been able to open the door under her own power had been a good sign. The blank looks and jumping hadn't.

He quickly learnt that she was a lot more intelligent than he'd first given her credit for but he still thought that if she ever did speak, it would be very small words and phrases. She had been is suspension for a VERY long time after all.

The door to Chell's room had been shut for quite a while. Wheatley coughed quietly.

"So how long are you going to be gone exactly?" he called. "Because if it's going to be ages then what am I supposed to do all day? It's not like I can move or anything, you've stopped that from happening. Not, not that I blame you or anything! No, of course not, without you and your clever human brain I'd be a pile of scrap forming rust lying god knows where. It's just that it is going to be a bit boring on my own. At least up there I had spacey, you know. Not much of a conversationalist, definitely not good at actual conversation but I could rely on him for a little background noise. Running commentary... Anyway, anyway, any ideas? On what I should do I mean. Can you even hear me though that door?" Wheatley raised his voice, just in case. "Any of this getting through!?"

There was a quiet sigh.

"Yes." answered a weary voice.

The bedroom door opened and Chell walked out, looking a lot more... dynamic was the first word that sprung to Wheatley's mind. Hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, jeans and t-shirt replaced with a spotless white blouse and dressed pants. She was fiddling with a watch on her left wrist, yanking it to the very last hole. It was still loose, however, travelling down her arm of its own accord when she lowered it. She frowned at her wrist.

"I can turn on the TV if you want some background noise." she said, glancing at the front door, clearly wanting to get going.

"That would be appreciated, thanks." he answered. Wheatley could actually feel the awkwardness settling in the air. He cleared his throat. "If you want to go? I'll try and entertain myself. No problem, honest. I used to do it all the time."

Chell smiled gratefully at him, switched on the news and went to leave. She paused briefly at the door, turned to look at the laptop perched on her desk.

"I'll see you later."

"Bye."

The door shut with at faint click, there was a jingle of keys and Wheatley was alone.

* * *

Wheatley snorted.

"Okay, this is starting to get boring."

He'd been watching the news for the best part of an hour. At first it had been really interesting, learning all about the humany world up on the surface. But after a while the smartly dressed people on the screen started to repeat themselves. He had heard the 'Celebrities raise money for starving children' story at least three times. The same with the 'Shooting star crashes in local forest.' story. He was the bloody star of that one!

Wheatley turned his attention to his new hard drive. He hadn't really explored it yet. There was his own bundle of files, strangely organised into alphabetical order. He didn't really want to mess with any of his own things. He knew what most of them did and the ones with scary looking names -'Aperture Science Virus Scan Software.' for example- he just steered clear of.

He reached out of his program and began to nose around the other software on the hard drive. A small voice in the back of his mind told him he really should respect Chell's privacy but he disregarded it. He was just curious. There was no harm in having a quick look about. It was his body now after all.

Law documents, work documents, a Powerpoint on the 'Importance of safe Internet banking'. At quick flick through that and Wheatley opened the Internet Browser. It immediately opened Chell's emails.

Scrolling down, Wheatley saw that Chell was a lot more intelligent than he'd thought. Half the stuff in the email he didn't understand at all. They were definitely in English, he was sure, but they sounded so complicated. Whoever Chell was talking to clearly needed medical help. What the hell was an 'ordinance'?

One email about two pages in caught his eye.

'THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR COMPUTER' it yelled.

Wheatley felt his internal workings freeze.

"What?! Why would she put me in here if there's something wrong with it?!" he yelped.

He frantically clicked the email. Then he began to scream.

* * *

AN: Hi again! I'm so sorry this took so long. I sort of ran out of steam half way through and then last week was my busiest week ever so I honestly didn't have time.

I'm really surprised by how my people actually followed and favourite not only the fic but also me! And I'm loving the reviews. Thanks again for even bothering to read in the first place.


	5. Chapter 5

Wheatley's scream dwindled to a whimper.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god." Wheatley whined as the flash of pain that appeared when he opened the email subsided. "That... was horrible." he panted. Then he began to feel it. I faint, cold, creeping sensation that felt entirely _wrong_. For some reason he immediately thought of neurotoxin, a light, vaguely green coloured gas crawling through the hard drive, shocking the laptops' system and kicking it into overdrive.

He mentally flailed, adding two and two together and, for once, coming to the correct answer.

The email!

He slammed the Internet Browser shut, but he was too late. Wheatley felt panic begin to set in as the gas crept closer to his small bundle of files. He felt the airy tendrils brush him, surrounding his thoughts. His internal temperature dropped to impossible depths and his vision swam. He could actually _see_ a greenish tinge, the pixels that formed the room transforming into tiny letters and numbers and then-

Gone.

Wheatley sat for a few seconds, frozen, before he dared to breathe out a- entirely useless- sigh of relief.

"Okay," he told himself, "okay, no more messing with the internet. I'm just not going to touch that button again. That was, that was awful. I wonder what on earth that was."

He briefly thought of continuing his exploration of the hard drive but the gas -it wasn't gas but that was the only word that really came to mind when he dared think about it- had scared the living daylights out of him. He instead returned his attention to the television, thankful that while he had been waging a very one-sided internal battle the smartly dressed humans had at least moved on to something he hadn't heard before.

If Wheatley had been a bit more perceptive of his new body, had stopped trying to ignore the voice in the back if his mind that had started gibbering in fear the moment he had come back online and actually paid attention to the intense misgivings he was feeling he may have been able to feel the cooling fans underneath him begin to spinning the slightest bit faster.

* * *

Chell opened the door, expecting to immediately hear Wheatley's loud voice pour out of the sitting room. So when she was greeted by complete silence she was slightly thrown off.

Her day had dragged, leaving her feeling even more exhausted than the day before. She had already mental prepared herself for the tidal wave of British accent she had to face when she got home and knowing she had to answer now instead of gesturing slightly and leaving Wheatley to figure it out made it all the worst. She still didn't trust him, not really, and whenever she spoke she felt she was showing more of herself than she was comfortable with.

So walking into silence was not was she expected.

"I'm home," she called, on the off chance that he was in sleep mode and hadn't heard her come in. When not even the faintest reply was heard she felt a small knot of worry begin to curl in her stomach. She hung up her coat on the hanger beside the front door and walked into the sitting room. It was exactly how she left it. TV playing the news, everything where it should be and the laptop parked quietly on her desk, facing away from her.

Chell cleared her throat. No response. She walked into Wheatley's line on sight, intending him to force him into acknowledge her and stopped before she could utter a word.

The screen was blank, the only indication that it was running at all was the orange standby light.

What had he done.

Chell's problem solving mind quickly kicked into action. The lead was still plugged in so he couldn't have ran out of power. And there was no _way_ that Wheatley was dimwitted enough to willing click on his own shut down button. She leaned forward to check behind the desk, placing her hand on the desk next to the laptop, and quickly pulled it back as she felt her skin scorch.

The vent on the side was blasting out hot air and when she noticed she suddenly became aware of an almost frantic whirring coming from within the device. The fans were having to deal with heat they weren't used to and they couldn't handle it.

Being to suspect what was going on, Chell pressed the 'on' button. The whirring reached a new panicked pace and the screen flashed white briefly before a message scrolled across it.

'Your computer shut down unexpectedly.'

'Resume last session?'

Chell tapped the enter key and watched nervously as the text disappeared and the computer began to reboot. After what was only mere minutes but felt like an eternity the laptop let off a soft lo-fi boop and her desktop flicked on the screen.

Before Chell could click a thing a series of large pop ups sprang across the screen.

'Warning. Your computer is at risk from (1) malicious virus.'

'Warning. Your computer is infected by (1) malicious virus. Please begin Antivirus purging.'

'CPU is performing abnormally high. This may cause programs to function slower than normal'

'Error. CPU is performing abnormally high. Shutting down all none vital processes.'

Chell scowled at the screen. He'd infected her laptop with a _virus_? Why didn't he just start the anti-virus ware? That's what it was there for.

She closed all the pop ups and, trying to ignore the almost helicopter-like noise coming from beneath her fingers- seriously how had the fan not shattered by now?- she clicked the anti-virus ware. It started by itself almost immediately, telling Chell that purging the computer of the virus could take up to three hours. A weary sigh escaped her mouth before she could stop it. She was really lucky that she didn't have very much work to do that night.

Leaving the virus ware to carry on without her interference she dragged the mouse over the computer icon and double tapped. She opened the hard drive and then grunted in annoyance when she saw that all the files held within had completely different names, illegible gibberish that she had no hope of figuring out. At least no straight away.

Chell stood up from the desk and went to grab a cup of coffee. She had a feeling that she was going to be busy for quite a while.

* * *

It was an hour or so later that she eventually located Wheatley's program file, renamed 'w23efge673fer2'. She was happily notice that the fans crazed whirring had settled down to a gentle hum and was confident that she could start him up again without any major issues. Remembering the last time that file had been opened –where he had shrieked loud enough to shatter glass and causing her to tip herself off her chair when she had jumped- Chell opened the webcam beforehand so he had less chance of throwing a fit. Then she opened his file and started his program.

10 seconds of silence and then;

"Whu…." Wheatley's voice slurred out of the speakers. "Wha' hap-hap-hap-happened? Is it gone? Did I beat-eat the neurotoxin?"

Chell raised an eyebrow. He must have been delirious. She sat back in her chair and raised her coffee mug at him in a greeting. Despite her irritation towards the ex-core she couldn't help but smile at the sound of his voice. There was a small part of her that had been worried that she wouldn't have been able to find him at all in the bundles of files.

"Chell? Where di-did you come from?"

She pointed to the wall behind her, indicating that she had been back for a while now. It was nearly half 6.

Wheatley made a small noise of confusion. "Ah, well, um nice to see see you back," he said, embarrassment very clear in his voice even through the slight glitches. "You can probaaably tell that I had a small problem getting settled-tled, tried to get comfy, nosed around a bit. Didn't see anything mind you! Notnot a thing! Very clean, very organized. Though I may- and this is a big may here- have caught a little virus. Nothing to worry about but you might want to look into that. Maybe."

Chell chuckled. He had been back online less than two minutes and already he was talking enough for both of them.

"Are you laughing? You shouldn't be laughing, this is serious! You know what, I was lying, then. I _have _caught a virus. So if you could use that human initiative and, you know, have a poke round. Sort it out. Because it's attacked me _twice _before and believe me it were not at all in the slightest bit fun. Can't remember much of the second one."

He paused, clearly trying not to panic and Chell used that moment to dive in and stop him.

"Fixed it. Researched it. Know how it got there." She said quietly.

"Oh," he replied. Another pause, this one awkward. "So you're a computer whizz too then." He joked lamely.

It wasn't a good joke. Wheatley knew it wasn't a good joke. He was practically stating the obvious, Chell _was _a computer whizz. But to his surprise she burst out laughing. And after the initial shock he joined in.

During her laughing fit Chell realized that she was so happy he was okay. It was after their almost manic giggling had dwindled to nothing did Wheatley voice the last thing that was bothering him.

"So how much trouble am I in for going through your emails?"

* * *

**HI! I'm alive! And I'm sooooo sorry about this taking so long. August was just the busiest month ever for me and then I got my results and I'd practically failed my exams. So I've had to restart from the beginning. But I'm much ****_much_**** happier now than I was before. And I've got more free time to write and things. Which is wonderful! **

**And wow so many favs and follows since I last updated! Thank you so much! **


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